In today’s media session, Gilbert Arenas let it be known that there would be no more practical pranks, hibachi grills, or lengthy blogging. Arenas is focusing on being more of a leader for the Washington Wizards and even said he wouldn’t talk to reporters anymore if it weren’t for the fines from David Stern and the NBA.

“I’m 27 now, and I’m not the entertainer anymore.”

“When I was entertaining and playing, all that you guys focused on was my words. Now, I’d rather you just focus on my basketball.”

“When I had fun, I got criticized. So we’ll see what happens when I’m serious.”

From all accounts of teammates and coaches, the Takeover might just happen this year, even if Gilbert doesn’t want to call it that. One thing is for sure – Arenas is focused on this season and bringing the Wizards back to the Playoffs.

Check out some quotes from Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders, who traveled to Chicago to watch Gilbert Arenas play and work out.

“There’s no question, a player of his talent, when he’s playing, he puts us from a team that’s competing for the playoffs to a team that’s an elite team in the playoffs. When you walk in the gym right now, you wouldn’t think that he’s hurt. If he’s at that ability when our season starts, we’re going to be an elite team in this league.”

“He gets to wherever he wants to get on the court. His quickness is back. He’s getting his scoring touch back, and he’s getting his confidence back. He’s excited about where he’s at. He looks good. His weight is lower than it’s been in the last few years. … He feels he’s got some things to prove.”

“This whole team revolves around Gilbert Arenas. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to say it, but I’m going to say it. I’ve been on this team four years — it depends on Gilbert Arenas. We can make as many trades as we want to. When he’s healthy and he’s playing, we’re a dangerous team. When we don’t have him, it makes it harder to move the ball; it’s hard to get things easy. That’s my point of view. If Gilbert is 70 percent, we’re going win a lot of games. If Gilbert is 80 percent, we’re going be No. 1 in the East. If he’s 100 percent, we might win a championship If he’s 70 percent, we’re still going to be good. But we need him on the court. It’s all on Gilbert. I don’t want to put pressure on him, because that’s my boy. I look at him as a best friend, brother. But it’s not pressure to him, because I know what he can do. If he’s healthy, it doesn’t matter what team we have.” – DeShawn Stevenson

I have talked to him. He’s just enjoying his summer right now. Gilbert is a hard worker, so that’s the part that we don’t have to worry about. He’s going to get his work in, get his shots up, and my job is just to get him to understand overall being a leader, and a leader starts by setting examples, and he understands that aspect of it. So the relationship that Gilbert and Flip and the staff are going to have is going to be wonderful, and we should win some games this year.

There is a reason you haven’t seem any updates from Gilbert Arenas’ blog. He retired from blogging.

“I started looking at it as, before, it was fun, and everybody has fun reading it. And then it’s like everything I said, everybody started using it as firepower, instead of saying it’s just entertainment. You know, people started using it, trying to take bits and pieces instead of enjoying the blog. So once I started seeing that, I just started visualizing, eventually, this is going to be the double-[edged] sword thing. It made me and it’s going to kill me, so I might as well stop.”